In some wireless communication systems, a user equipment (UE) wirelessly communicates with a base station to send data to the base station and/or receive data from the base station. For example, cell phones may communicate with a cell phone tower to make and receive phone calls. In this example, the cell phone tower would be the base station, and each cell phone would be a UE.
A wireless communication from a UE to a base station is referred to as an uplink communication, and a wireless communication from a base station to a UE is referred to as a downlink communication.
Resources are required to make uplink and downlink communications. For example, a base station may wirelessly transmit data to a particular UE in a downlink transmission at a particular frequency and/or during a particular slot in time. The frequency and time slot used are examples of resources.
When a base station is making a downlink transmission to a UE using particular resources, another downlink transmission from a neighbouring base station, or even from the same base station, may also use those same resources. This other downlink transmission may interfere with the data transmission from the base station to the UE.